


pathikrita

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hindu Character, Hinduism, Multi, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 01:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16630079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel





	pathikrita

In the flickering light of a thousand pyres she asks the grandfather of her husbands, “Could I have changed anything, or was this a path I was fated to walk?”

Vyasa looks old, not with the inscrutable ancient calm she associates with great sages, but the bone-weary exhaustion of a man who has seen consigned to the pyre his elder brother, his grandsons, his great-grandsons: a man who never expected a family and only now knows the true depth of his love for them. Still, he gives her all of his considerable attention and lays his hand on her head as she kneels beside him, and says, “This is your life’s work, Yajnaseni, that you emerged from fire to accomplish.”

The Kuru clan, that he brought into being and she brought to destruction, lies burning before them. There are bereaved women walking ghost-like from pyre to pyre, watching the beloved flesh of brothers and husbands and sons consumed by Sarvabhook, falling to ash. No mountain of sandalwood is tall enough to disguise the stink of meat roasting, organs crackling, bones cracking in the heat. She will be empress of a land of ghosts and widows, of children too young to remember their fathers and raised in hatred.

“I might have walked a different path, if I had known then what I know now,” she admits. If she does not mean that she would have mitigated her fury, that is nothing she need reveal.

“Would you, Agnigarbha?” He offers her a weary, familiar smile and she thinks wildly that he too is called Krishna, that great sages have great powers, that he might turn her words into truth.

Well, and so they are true. She bows her head under his hand, and cups her own hands in obeisance, in readiness to accept his blessing. “I would.”  

 

* * *

 

She wakes with her stomach bloated, her back aching, and lies looking around her at a room that belongs to no palace she has ever called home. All the furniture is of ivory, and the great mirror of polished bronze held in the curl of an elephant’s trunk. Hastinapur, with dice clicking already in the gaming halls.

Freed from Dhaatreyika’s fussing hands she goes to the chambers of Queen Gandhari. As the men of the Kuru clan have gathered in the Gaming Hall or, disliking games of chance, gone hunting with their friends, so too have the women gathered in the palace of Queen Gandhari. Mothers and aunts and nieces and daughters and sisters who go years without each other sit with heads bent together or arms around necks and waists, telling over the days of their separation.

Most of these women Draupadi had met in an earlier life only when their menfolk were dead. Here, Bhurisravas’ venerable queen speaking to Sudakshina’s young daughter; there, Dusshala laughing at Lakshmanaa’s earnest attempts at the complex braids of a grown woman; in a corner Vasusena’s wife with a child in her lap: Vrishali, whom Gandhari had praised as she guided her son’s hand to her husband’s pyre.

She sits beside Dusshala and helps her unwind Lakshmanaa’s hair, pick out the ornaments hopelessly tangled in its coils. When blood seeps from her womb onto her garments she apologises profusely to the queens, and Kunti laughs and tells her its ceasing is one of the benefits of age. Laughter rolls through the room, though Lakshmanaa looks bewildered and Vrishali claps her hands over her son’s infant ears as the other women offer leering suggestions of the benefits of age and the advantages of youth.

“Come with me,” Bhanumati tells her. “Queen Gandhari no longer maintains her own isolation room, and I live only across the courtyard.”

It is a sunny room, and large, and Bhanumati calls for soothing drinks and her own dice board, and spends the morning in conversation with her and playing with Vrishali.

In the early afternoon Dusshala comes in with an entourage of maids and bars the door. “Your husbands have gambled you away, Empress. My brother is looking for you like a hunter for an injured doe. None of us have told him where you are, but we cannot keep you safe if you leave the Inner Palace.”

This is a moment to meet with rage, fire roaring up, but she has seen too many heroes die, fire lick over the bodies of men she loved and loathed. Draupadi says, “Then I will stay here, if Princess Bhanumati allows it.”

Bhanumati looks for a moment irresolute, then lifts a determined chin towards her handmaiden. “The Empress delights me with her gracious company. Vrishali, shall you leave or stay?”

Vrishali sighs. “If your husbands and brothers have been foolish, can I hope that my Vrisha has been wise? Send a maid for my son when you can, Princess, before anyone remembers to disdain him as a sutaputra.”

“I’ll inform Mother and return,” Dusshala says, and swirls out.

“You need not do this for me,” Draupadi says into the waiting silence.

Bhanumati laughs. “Would you do less for me, if Duryodhana had lost and gambled me away?”

 

She is still a slave in the morning, Arjuna’s protestations drowned out and disregarded, Bhima shouted down. But in the morning, wine has worked its way from their tempers, and in sober light the solemnity of their deeds lends an odd dignity even to Duryodhana. Perhaps it is instead Bhanumati’s arm around her waist, familiar as a sister, Lakshmanaa’s head, crowned with gold-threaded braids, peering over her shoulder, the presence of Queens Gandhari and Kunti within the chamber, all the sisters and aunts and cousins watching.

“Panchali was not asked for, nor gave her consent to being gambled,” Duryodhana says. “As a free woman, a princess, cannot be the wife of slaves, her marriages have been dissolved. She is free to go to her father, and to take her personal wealth from Indraprastha if she accompanies my escort there.”

“My sons?”

“Your sons are the sons of slaves,” Duryodhana says, and smiles. After a day with Dusshala it is difficult to call it cruel. “May you choose better husbands when next you marry, Princess. Will you come to Indraprastha, or shall we send a message at once to Panchal?”

“I will go to Indraprastha with you. My jewels once bought cities, droves of cattle. They’re a generous price for five boys not yet grown.”

“They would adorn Lakshmanaa as befits a goddess,” Bhanumati says, and steps forward till she stands toe to toe with Duryodhana who wraps his arms around her with the habitual ease of a long marriage. “Grant her this, for love of me.”

“Priye,” Duryodhana starts.

“Grant me this, and Panchal will stay neutral in any war you fight,” Draupadi says, surprising herself.

 

When she wakes again it is to the stench of corpses, Vyasa’s face looming above hers as she swims to consciousness. Her sons are alive, and princes of Panchal. Her husbands are dead. 

 

* * *

 

She sleeps again, wakes again in Kampilya, in the palace that was hers from fire to fire, stepping out and stepping around. Before that it had been the nursery, with all the half-recognised royal and noble children, waiting to be old or significant enough for their fathers to pay heed. She must be between sixteen and eighteen, in this body, and the youth tells in her lithe steps, the lack of pain in her limbs, the supple slimness of her body.

Eighteen, perhaps, with the flower garlands thick above every door in the palace, and the guards and attendants nudging each other as she walks past them. If she rides through the city she will see every house with its little wreath of flowers, at dawn she might meet the carts that go everyday from the palace with fragrant burdens. No lamps are yet lit in welcome, she finds when she peers from the highest walls of the palace. Grey-robed Kampilya hides itself in the night from unfamiliar visitors as it has all the years of her memory. You can find your way to the fortress if you know the paths, and once in the valley it is no secret at all, unlike the shimmering impossibility of Indraprastha, but you have to know your way through forested mountains. Panchal has been invaded once in living memory, and a friend of the King drew the maps and led the way, and even so nobody found Kampilya. 

How desperate is her father, to be showing so many kings and princes the heart of his land? Desperate enough to wish his children into instruments of fate.

Shikhandi hauls her off the parapet, swings her down with his arm around her waist, and he is so young still, her brother who lived to see his nephews grown, his wife with grey in her hair. His arms around her are such a blessing, and his laughing eyes, when she has only to close her own to remember him dead on the ground, his sword-arm hacked off, Shatanika’s corpse crumpled behind his.

“Lunging over the wall won’t make the future roll around any sooner,” he tells her and then, catching sight of her face, adds, “Come with me. The Yadavas are here and you’re wanted. You can be as rude as you want, it’ll be better for you than brooding into the night.”

Krishna is the same as ever. Oh not in appearance, his hair is dark as a raven’s wing when she has seen it grey as a crow’s, and his smiles have not yet carved a groove into his skin. But she feels the same, seeing him, as she ever has or will: loved and sheltered and understood.

She bows to her father hurriedly, and takes the seat nearest Krishna. “I shall not suffer through this swayamvara when it is not my choice at all, but a matter of good aim.”

“And of a strong arm,” Dhrishtadyumna says, but only because it is how they have been describing it. Then he stops, startled, and blinks. “Sister?”

“You knew we were planning this,” Yudhamanyu snaps. “What childishness has overtaken you now?”

“Let her speak,” Uttamauja snaps back. “It is her marriage and her life of which speaks.”

Satyajit and Shikhandi look to each other with the exasperation of eldest siblings everywhere. Panchalya and Suratha sidle closer to their chosen brothers. Vrika looks helplessly at their father and then to the room at large, his hands spread in silent remonstrance.

In another year or two, Kumara and Shatrunjaya and Janmejaya will all be of an age to attend upon their father in his most royal guise, and the chaos will only deepen. She remembers Yudhishtira once surveying the room and saying, “I see we were almost calming, beloved.”

“You are royal, and in Panchal, and loved,” her father says, and she cannot think of his death at Drona’s hands, she cannot think of the echoes where her brothers’ voices will fall silent. “If you have a reason for your refusal, you must state it. If we cannot untangle your thoughts, surely Krishna can.”

As Krishna bows and preens, she says, “I am in Panchal, and all here know the disasters that may befall any swayamvara where valour chooses the bridegroom, and not the woman herself. Then too, it is a contest of archery and I must fall to either a prince of the Kurus, or to their vassal.”

“Arjuna is dead,” Vrika interrupts, frowning. “Or so we have been told.”

“We can hardly believe all we are told,” Krishna says. “Panchali?”

“If Arjuna is dead, then must I fall to Vasusena, whom nothing but a good aim renders suitable? If Arjuna is yet living, must I fall to the man who triumphed over my father and brought Panchala to its knees? Am I a prize that goes to him, father, as half your kingdom went to his preceptor?”

“You know for what fate you have been consecrated,” Drupada says, but there are no signs of impending rage on his face, only consideration that is a mirror of Vrika’s.

“Who can know it as I do? Yet you would have me share a Kuru bed, bear Kuru children, allow love for a Kuru prince into my heart, as you will into yours, loving any grandchildren I bring into your house. With such ties, will the destruction of the Kurus not be a destruction of the Panchalans as well? Would you ask it of Dhrishtadyumna, to become Drona’s son, or of Shikhandi to be Bhishma’s companion?”

“You have had good teachers, and they have taught you to argue well,” Drupada concedes. “If you had your choice, who would you choose? Tell us now that we may know whether your maiden’s heart has run ahead of your politician’s mind.”

“My heart and mind are in accord in choosing Krishna,” she tells him, while Krishna chokes on air beside her. “This marriage would strengthen our alliance with the Yadavas that we may each lend strength to the other in need, it lends us support even from Hastinapura if the Pandavas are somehow alive. While it makes us enemies of a sort of Magadha, we had no friendship there to lose.”

“And you love him,” Shikhandi says.

“I trust him blindly,” she tells him, and takes Krishna’s hands in her own. “Am I too bold?”

“Is not your boldness enchanting?” Krishna retorts, and then says, “I am a much-married man. Satyabhama would kill me if I brought another bride home.”

“Satyabhama loves me,” she says with the surety of a lifetime’s friendship. “She would no sooner turn me away than I would Subhadra.”

Subhadra is seven, perhaps eight, a child still playing with dolls and sticking flowers in her sisters-in-law’s intricate hair. Krishna’s hands tighten on hers and his eyes sharpen.

“No,” he murmurs. “She would despise me for turning away so eager a supplicant, especially when you have travelled so far, haven’t you, Krishnaa?”

“Sister?” Panchalya says. “Do you truly fear the swayamvara?”

“Not if I am allowed my choice, and not if my choice is amenable.”

“Perhaps our hearts shall match as our names do,” Krishna says, uncharacteristically ponderous, and pulls his hands from hers to bow to her father. “If you will allow it, I shall be among the suitors tomorrow.”

 

She wakes and her husband is still living, and her sons are still living, but the Pandavas are dead, killed without ever being Kings in Indraprastha, with no Panchalan support to prop them up.

* * *

 

When she wakes next she is younger still, a little girl caught up in her mother’s arms and being taken to be bathed still half-asleep. How strange to be so very little, to be bathed and clothed and fed because these tasks are beyond her, because she can walk and talk and even run a little, but the Queen’s bed of state is too high for her to climb unaided.

Three, perhaps. Perhaps some weeks younger. Certainly no older. When they were four, she and Dhrishtadyumna had gone into the royal nursery, and these are plainly her mother’s rooms. How odd to look at her mother and know that she will die when her twins are five, that even an expert huntress might be brought down by her quarry in a moment of inattention. In another kingdom, with another Queen, she might have suspected malice, but Prishataa had sister-wives who bore sons and survived her, Prishataa had collected Princess Vaisakhi’s bewildered children into her arms and let them into her bed and soothed their fears.

But still how strange to see her mother, darkly beautiful and desperately young, twenty-two, perhaps, or twenty-three. How strange to hear her voice amused and chastising, telling the attending maids to not let her children wander into the night gardens, because a mendicant had spent the day there already, and looked to be spending the night.

 

It is only too easy to escape the notice of the maids long enough to scurry through the archway of the night gardens, jasmine already redolent in the air. One rushes after her, muttering imprecations, but she has gained by then the attention of the grave man robed in ragged white meditating under the blooming tree.

Drona hefts her with the ease of a devoted father, cradles her in one arm and smiles dismissal at the hovering maid. “The princess is safe with me. Her father was a friend of mine in school.”

“Friend?” she interposes, carefully a child. Perhaps three. How had she been at three? All her life till she walked through fire is a bright blur. “You and my father?”

“When we were boys a little older than you,” he confides. “Would you like stories?”

Her enthusiasm when she agrees is not altogether feigned. She had stories from him when she was a new bride in Hastinapura, but the bitterness had sunk too deep and he had been her father’s enemy, usurper of half the land that ought have been her brothers’ inheritance. She had not loved him herself, had thought Arjuna half a fool for his devotion.

Now he tells her stories of adventure as children, trials of strength as adolescents, turns even the humiliations of his indigent adulthood into tales fit for a child’s tender ears. Of course Arjuna loved him, of course her father hated him, of course she has been sent to this moment.

When Drupada calls for his most neglected petitioner, his youngest child comes in as well, harassed and haranguing maids trailing them.

The court falls silent, the babble of voices ceasing.

Drupada climbs from his throne and crosses the hall to stand before his oldest friend. “Give her to me.”

“I have a son,” Drona says when she has settled into her father’s arms. “He’s ten years old, younger than some of your sons, older than this princess. He has never known the taste of milk, has drunk rice powder swirled in water and been delighted. You promised me when we were young, that we were friends and would share everything.”

“You think we can be friends,” Drupada hisses, and then says, “what is it, little one?”

“He told me stories of when you were friends,” Draupadi says urgently. “I want one.”

“One what,” Drupada asks, with the awareness of a man with twelve children that the demands of toddlers need to be met immediately, lest there be storms of tears or fluids less mentionable in court.

“A friend. I want one. I only have brothers, I want a friend. He said you climbed trees and hunted and studied and had fun.”

“We did,” Drupada concedes, and looks up at his friend with his patched garments, his hair greying too fast, his weary smile. “What do you want?”

“A share in your wealth of cows,” Drona says, “and grain enough to last till next harvest. We are but three, we do not need much.”

“Grain and cows,”  Drupada says. “I give more at any yajna to any brahmin who asks for alms. For one who was once a friend, and for one who has pleased my only daughter, I can do more.”

 

Drona leaves with wagons pilled high with sacks of grain, bales of cloth, a small herd of cattle and a herdsman to attend to them, carpenters to build a sturdier house, a bag of coins to use in pressing need.

Draupadi sleeps and wakes again, still in the carrion-fields of Kurukshetra, and Arjuna clasps her close as she weeps.

* * *

 

Always, always, she wakes in Kurukshetra. Always fate brings her feet back on this path, to her destiny of destroying the sons of King Kuru, far though they may have spread and distant though they might have grown.


End file.
